Travel Day – Day 68: Eating Well On $1 A Day

Another travel day which are always the most stressful days for this challenge because I have no time to prepare anything and I have to move all my food to another place which is one gigantic pain. The good news is that I will be house sitting for about 3 weeks so I won't have to move everything back again for a bit. Still, I always dread these days.

To try and calm myself and get in the correct frame of mind, I did do my morning walk and found a new fruit tree — black fig. This was on private property, but the owner was out in front. I had no idea what the tree was and simply asked what kind of fruit tree it was. The owner explained it was a black fig tree and handed me a couple to try:

I wonder what would be the best way to use these? Any suggestions?

Most of the day was spent packing up my stuff and traveling to my new residence for the net few weeks and getting settled into the place.

Cherry Plum Oatmeal

I decided to use up the last of the cherry plums in my morning oatmeal to get a filling meal into my stomach for the move to the house sitting job. I've been surprised at how much I like these and I should be able to find more with a bit of searching.

Double Peanut Butter Sandwich

By the time I was able to get everything moved and settled into the new place, I was starving (and still needed to take the dog for a walk). I threw together a double peanut butter sandwich, a handful of the toasted Wheat Thins and a glass of blueberry juice (half water / half juice). Quick, easy meal that fills the stomach and it is hard to complain about that 😉

Beef Mushroom Rice

I was exhausted by the end of the day and had no desire to cook anything. I simply reheated the beef & mushroom rice for dinner and called it a day.

8 Comments

Jeffrey–I have a suggestion for this phase of the challenge. How about trying to incorporate more whole grains into your diet? I think you use whole wheat bread, but brown rice would be more nutritious than the white rice, and there are also some good whole grain pastas. The whole grains are not only healthier but they keep you full longer. A great gadget to have is a small rice cooker, which can also be used as a steamer. You can add the rice and liquid and turn it on and it turns off automatically when done. It’s nice to have warm rice ready with little effort at the end of the day.

I’ve noticed that you use fewer things to cover up the taste of certain foods. Granted, you use more spices because you can, but you seem to have moved away from using cream cheese or some other dressing/mayonnaise when you eat Wheat Thins. While this may be from your inability to obtain more cream cheese at a reasonable price, your tastes have changed (like the cupcake and only being able to drink half-juice/half-water). It’s really interesting to see how a person’s tastes can change based on what’s available and how people don’t “need” certain flavors.

With what you have I would suggest baking the figs. Prick the outsides with a fork and bake then at 300 with a bit of water in the pan until they are tender. then you can scoop out the filling. or cut them into quarters and sprinkle with crushed cereal from the bottom of a box.

Figs are great! Get as many as you can. They are wonderful eaten fresh, alone or with a dab of yoghurt, salty cheese, or even cream cheese. They are good cut up in salads, or baked. Baked with a chicken or meat, they are wonderful. I once had access to a huge fig tree, and made pickled figs, figs steeped in tea – delicious. Since figs are very perishable, if you get more than you can use immediately you can freeze them and eat them rather like ice cream.

If you come across limes on your foraging trips, and want to try making lime rice, try squeezing the juice into the water, leave the slices in the water as well, then add the rice and cook it how you normally do. You should use at least a couple of limes to get the flavor for this. Lime rice really compliments Mexican-style grilled bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, black beans and maybe some kind of meat, all seasoned with cumin, smoked Spanish paprika, salt, pepper, whatver else you like. If you just throw all the veggies in a pan with the seasoning and a little oil and kind of let them sit on all sides so they get just a little singed they will taste grilled.